Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Senior Moment

My mother-in-law refers to her lapses of memory as "senior moments". Although I am nowhere near old enough to qualify for senior citizen status or the discount, I have the moments all the time and have been having them since I was a child. This Sunday there was a funny one.

My job at church is to come up with the music for sacrament meeting, the meeting that everyone attends together. Basically, it's just picking the hymns and signing people up to share their talents for special musical numbers. I am definitely not the most qualified, but I do appreciate music, want to learn more about it, and I love this calling. So on Sunday, I was feeling a little more righteous than usual and decided to call & remind people of their commitments to sing/play/whatever. Somehow, I mixed up in my head some random people in the congregation and made the following phone call to someone who justifiably could qualify for a senior moment:

"Hi, this is JoEllen M from church. How are you?"
"Fine." (probably had no clue who was calling)
"I'm just calling to remind you that the RS choir is singing next Sunday?"
"Oh, I don't sing in the choir."
"No, not the ward choir," I explained very patiently, "the Relief Society choir. Remember? Is it okay with you if we sing this coming Sunday?"
"Sure! Go right ahead!"
"But won't you be singing too?" gently reminding her that this is actually her responsibility, I'm just being nice and helping her remember.
"Oh, I haven't sung in years!"
At this point, I was feeling slightly disoriented. I thanked her for talking and hung up. I then looked at the list and realized what an idiot I was to have confused the names of this sister and the one who actually was in charge. Not even close. In fact, there's no reason whatsoever I should have mixed up the two ladies. Just my slice of humble pie for the week! And something to laugh about whenever I sing in RS.

3 comments:

Kent said...

What a stoop!

I hope you called her back and admitted your mistake so she wasn't super confused the next Sunday and went up to sing a solo or something.

Cheryl said...

I vote for the solo.
Everyone has those moments. It takes a big woman to admit it and publicly share her mistake.
By the way . . . you've been tagged.

kurt said...

JoEllen, I've been worried about you for years.